This architect enjoys the digital realm, but can imagine some improvements: emails that smell of ink, perhaps, a world without Facebook and an iPhone with a built-in corkscrew

What is your favourite website?

It would have to be the Guardian (www.guardian.co.uk) – recently there’s been a hilarious exchange with Lily Allen (pictured) on Marina Hyde’s blog. Also, I have been reading the blogs of an environmentalist friend of mine with interest: www.capefarewell.com/diskobay – he has just been on a journey to a glacier at Disko Bay in Greenland with a boatload of artists like Jarvis Cocker (pictured, middle) and Sophie Calle

What do you prefer: letters or email?

There’s nothing like getting, or writing, a carefully considered letter – I like to smell the ink – but the post is virtually all junk now. Emailing is how I mostly communicate, though I’m wary that things can get very bad-tempered very quickly in email exchanges.

What is in your digital holster?

I got my iPhone early and it’s pretty battered up now, but indispensible as I’m usually between our Cambridge and London studios, or somewhere up the Lea Valley. I like the bottom-up quality of programmes being written for the iPhone now – for a few pence you can make it into a voice recorder or a thing to measure angles. Shame about the hopeless camera and the lack of a fold-out corkscrew.

What is the last thing you bought online?

A huge beanbag for my daughter Lily.

What shall we play?

I don’t play games online myself, but I like to watch what my kids are playing sometimes – it’s another world, all about chasing fruit or avoiding squirrels.

What was the last song you downloaded?

The Fall’s (founder Mark E Smith, pictured) Industrial Estate, to coincide with the launch of our public realm work on the Park Royal estate in London.

Do you watch TV online?

Yes, occasionally - it’s great as I rarely catch regular TV. I have recently watched Fonejacker, Channel 4’s prank phonecall comedy programme.

Do you listen to podcasts?

I subscribe to Radio Four’s In Our Time and From Our Own Correspondent. I had to stop listening to things like Down the Line (a Radio Four satire on phone-in programmes) on headphones, as other passengers n the train looked nervous and upset as I cackled away to myself.

Do you use social networking sites?

I can’t think of anything worse!

Postscript

Tom Holbrook is the director of 5th Studio architects